Through the Fire
by hharper
Summary: Bella finds herself in the woods, a vampire, with little memory of anything before the fire. Set mid-New Moon.
1. Chapter 1

When the burning stopped, it was raining again. It wasn't unusual, this rain. It seemed like it'd been falling on me since the burning began, since the beginning of time. Sometimes the rain came hard in icy sharp drops that hurt my face and were useless against the fire that consumed me; other times it was soft, barely a mist on my flesh, chilling my skin while I burned from the inside out. But when the fire stopped, when I realized there was more to life than the burning that consumed my soul, the rain was altogether different. I couldn't feel the chill on my skin. Heck, I couldn't even feel it falling on my face at all. But I could hear it. I could hear it rolling off the leaves of the trees in the canopy above, droplets combining to add heft before gravity pulled them to the ground. I could hear the heavy drops and the light ones hitting the forest floor and I could tell which were which and were they'd landed. I could hear the water hitting my skin, tapping out its unsteady rhythm on my flesh. And while I knew I should be dissatisfied with the water on my face, it didn't bother me one bit. I could barely feel a thing.

For some reason that didn't seem right, and I furrowed my brow in a frown, changing the song of the rain with my movements.

They'd tortured me forever, those tiny drops of water. For eternity I was frozen in place, shrieking, writhing, _burning_. And for all eternity the rain tapped on my skin, freezing me, hurting me, making me just a little more miserable if being more miserable was a possibility. So why did it feel different now that the fire was out? Why didn't the rain hurt anymore?

I opened my eyes and gazed at the sky through the branches of the trees, watching the rain fall. It only took me a moment to realize I could track the path of the rainfall from the sky to the ground and another to realize each droplet of water contained a tiny rainbow I could see when it emerged from the clouds. The view was breathtaking and I was mesmerized. It was beautiful.

I watched the rain fall until it stopped, forgetting how it'd tortured me before it became hypnotizing. I don't know how long I stayed. It may have been a second, a minute, an hour. All I knew was that I watched until I finished, and then I didn't watch anymore. It was that simple.

I sat up after the rain and took in my surroundings. Everything was green, lush. It was clear it never stopped raining where I was, wherever that happened to be. I could feel a fragment of a thought on the edge of my consciousness, a tiny feeling that told me there were other places, places that weren't so green and drown in water, but I didn't try to capture it. The thought wasn't important. It was green where I was and that was all that mattered.

I was on my feet before I fully realized I wanted to stand and breathed deeply. Air felt strange in my lungs, almost as if it didn't belong, but the movement felt familiar, comfortable, so I breathed in again.

It was on the second breath that I caught the smells. How I knew what they were, I had no idea. Trees, moss, birds, earth – my brain knew them and categorized them effortlessly. It felt like I knew them, like I'd experienced them before. Did I believe in reincarnation? Did I believe in past lives? If I did, I would have believed these things were memories from the past, from a life I'd lived before I came to this place through the fire. If I didn't, it didn't matter. My brain knew these things and that's all that mattered.

I breathed deeply again, raising my face to the sky, and captured a smell that brought back the fire.

I was off, running through the forest, before I'd decided to move. I couldn't tell whether I was moving toward the flame or away from it, but I knew I needed to run. I knew my salvation was wherever I was headed.

My body moved like it was made to run, dodging branches, jumping logs, and gliding through underbrush like it wasn't even there. Running felt amazing, the forest whipping past my face, and I pushed myself faster, more eager every second to get wherever the hell I was going. After half of forever, I finally, _finally_ I saw the thing that went with smell that set my throat on fire. And oh my, was she ever pretty.

She was small, brunette, and I was on her in a second, my teeth tearing into her before I knew what I was going to do. Her blood flowed freely with my bite and filled my mouth. It was the most delicious thing I'd ever tasted.

I held her body flush against mine and drank for all I was worth, letting her blood to extinguish the fire in my throat. It worked, her blood, to keep down the flames, and I wished for a wild moment that the sky would bleed. Maybe if it could weep blood instead of water I wouldn't have had to burn for eternity.

Her blood stopped pumping into my mouth long before I'd had enough and I dropped her where I stood, letting her body crumple to the ground. I watched her fall and felt odd for a moment, though I couldn't figure out why. It felt strange to see her in a heap on the forest floor and felt almost wrong to leave her there, but I had no idea what I should do with her. Now that she was empty and the blood was gone I didn't need her any more.

I puzzled over her body for the briefest of moments before breathing in again, feeling my chest expand and my throat burn as I took in air, and smelled something my brain now knew, something it'd learned in this life. Blood. Food. Life.

I was off through the wood again before I knew it.


	2. Chapter 2

I heard him before I saw him, whistling a tune I imagined he hoped would rival the song of the birds. I stopped running when I heard him, barely disturbing the soil beneath my feet with my sudden stop, and tilted my head to the side, ear to the sky, listening. His pitch was off, his tone was harsh, and he sounded like nothing from the forest. But the tune was familiar, haunting. Almost like something from a dream. Almost like something I had know once, long before I'd been tormented by the fire.

The thought was jarring, painful, and nearly forced the air from my still inflated lungs. So I pushed it away and merged with the wind, letting the fire in my throat choose my path. I came upon him just a few moments later.

He was a bear of a man, tall and broad with a full, black beard and skin the colour of the earth. I ignored the burning in my throat and stopped short of his clearing, watching, listening from the shadows of the forest.

My eyes missed nothing as I watched the man work, erecting a structure that billowed in the wind and looked far less than sturdy. While he worked, while his muscles bulged and flexed in a way that stoked the fire in my throat, he continued his song, continued doing his best to mimic the birds. His melody was torture, lovely and painful simultaneously, causing an ache in my chest that I couldn't help but scratch. I found myself torn between charging in to shut him up or standing still and enduring the flames to listen.

I was in the clearing with him before I realized I'd decided to silence him, and pulled myself to a stop just inside the tree line. His song cut off as soon as he sensed my presence.

"Well hey there," he said, dropping the wood he'd been stacking and springing to his feet with a grace that surprised me. "My name's Dave. Are you camping out here too?" I looked at his hand outstretched to shake, surprised to realize I knew his words as well as his gesture. I didn't return his movement and he dropped his hand with a lift of his shoulders, returning to his knees by his small stack of wood.

My eyes tracked his every movement, the song that had tortured me just moments ago far from my mind as I listened to the rhythmic sound of his blood. I couldn't help but lick my lips.

"There aren't too many campers out this way this time of year," he said, drawing my attention from his blood. I focused on his words but was still acutely aware of the pounding rhythm in the background. I could almost feel my mouth watering at the sound. "I thought it was just gonna be me and my wife. Are you out here with a group?" He glanced back at me as if he expected an answer, dipping in fingers into his front pocket and coming out with something small and brightly coloured. He turned it in his hand and it snicked, then snicked again, then ignited.

Fire.

I hissed and stepped away, the fire in my throat and the promise of blood the only thing keeping me anywhere near the flame. My body still remembered the burning, the eternal torment, and I wanted nothing to do with the fire.

"Whoa, hey," the man said, dropping the fire starter on the ground and returning to his feet. I couldn't tear my gaze from its neon casing, almost expecting it to burst into flame any second, and the man ducked his head to meet my gaze. I reluctantly redirected my attention. "There's nothing to be afraid of. It won't hurt you."

I kept my eyes on his, my face blank as he scanned my body. His eyes widened as he took me in and I studied him, trying to dissect his expression. He looked . . . surprised. Like he was seeing something he wasn't expecting. I let my own gaze flicker down before returning to his face. I thought I looked fine but didn't really know what I was looking for.

"Your clothes," he choked out a moment later, sounding half strangled. "Are you hurt? Do you need help?" I looked down again, taking more time to examine myself. I wasn't entirely sure what he was asking. I had been hurt, by the fire, but that was on the inside. My clothes didn't burn, my clothes looked fine. They were mostly intact from what I could tell, and didn't look much different from what the woman had been wearing. And the fire was out now, I didn't need help.

I looked back at the man, taking in his new expression. He looked . . . horrified, scared almost. The blood began to pulse through him with more fury and the fire in my throat flared. I felt the corners of my mouth raise in a little smile. I understood now.

"Blood," I breathed without thought, the fact that I could speak shocking the hell out of me. Apparently I knew this dance even if I didn't realize it.

"B-blood," he stuttered, eyes flickering down to my body. "Shit."

He started walking then, pacing in front of his pile of wood, back and forth, back and forth. My eyes tracked his movement as I focused on the sound of his blood. The fire in my throat was reaching an unbearable level when he stopped and turned to face me. "My wife will be back soon. Jenny went to get some more wood. When she gets back we'll take you wherever you need to go. The hospital, the police, wherever." He looked uncertain, a little frazzled, and dragged a hand through his hair in his agitation, standing it all up on end.

I stilled completely, watching him fidget.

That movement. I'd seen it before. There was no way I could have, but I knew it; it was as familiar to me as anything even though it wasn't quite right.

I cocked my head and narrowed my eyes, trying to solve the puzzle. He froze under my scrutiny, fingers still buried in his hair.

It was the hair, that was the problem. The hair shouldn't have been so dark, it shouldn't have been so short. I didn't know what it _should_ have been, but I knew it wasn't right. The ache in my chest, the one I'd felt during the man's song, returned with a vengeance.

"Your hair isn't right," I said, running my fingernails over the ache in my chest, half tempted to puncture the skin and dig out whatever it was causing the hurt. He looked puzzled, relaxing and dragging his fingers across his scalp. The movement was the same as before but still wrong. Suddenly I was very angry.

"What's wrong with my –" he managed, before I sprung.

Dave never knew what hit him.


	3. Chapter 3

I stayed with him in the clearing long after he was dead, sitting with his body for what must have been hours as the sun went down the forest grew gradually darker. I'd gone and retrieved the woman when it was still light and had laid their bodies side by side in their shelter. Seeing them together, even lifeless, bloodless, stirred strange feelings in me. What they'd shared . . . . I didn't have a word for it but it was a feeling I knew. Somehow, impossibly, I knew what bound them together.

It felt almost wrong to leave them there, even with each other. I knew there was something I should do with them, just as I knew the song the man had whistled and the language that he spoke, but what needed to be done eluded me. The knowledge was in me, like I'd lived it, dreamed it all before, but the thoughts, the memories, the information I needed, were obscured by the smoke from the fire that bore me.

I eventually left the clearing, sliding the man's fire starter into my pocket. I didn't want to take it with me but I also didn't want to leave it behind. I knew in my soul that I could be lost to the fire, and it felt better to have it in my possession than anywhere else.

I took off through the forest at top speed, zigzagging at a run, breathing in and out periodically, smelling, letting my brain label, catalog, map everything. And while my mind was busy supplying information I never knew I'd forgotten, my thoughts were in the clearing, on the couple, and the feelings that they'd shared.

He'd said that she was his wife. I knew the feelings that went along with that title even if I didn't understand the connotations of the title itself. It felt . . . soft, but hard at the same time. Pleasant, soothing, like being surrounded by the cool night air after being engulfed in flames. That feeling I understood well. It felt desperate and fierce, both warm and hot at the same time. It was . . . overwhelming. All consuming. And very painful?

I scratched at the pain in my chest absently as I blurred past a black bear, barely sparing it a glance but noting the slightest tickle in my throat.

I had a feeling pain wasn't supposed to be a part of it, a part of this feeling. It didn't seem to go with the rest. But it was there, along with everything else, so maybe it was right. After all, what did I know, really?

I knew the feeling of the flames. That searing, burning feeling that I'd endured since the beginning of time was well ingrained. I knew that blood could put out the fire even though it didn't make sense that something so hot could douse the flames. I knew that it was delicious, the blood – salty, thick, metallic, hot – and that I'd go to the ends of the earth to find it. I'd go anywhere if it meant I didn't have to live with the fire anymore.

But past the blood, past the flames, I didn't know much of anything.

I explored the woods most of the night, thoughts on everything and nothing at all. I discovered dens of sleeping bears, rivers, two lakes, and deer, both in herds and on their own. I'd had an urge at one point to chase down a vicious looking feline my mind didn't know, but I resisted the urge easily and focused on my searching, my wandering. It was when I was wading into the second lake to examine a particularly spicy smelling stick that my brain finally supplied the word I'd been searching for all night without realizing I'd been looking. That feeling that had been taunting me, torturing me. It was love.

The word itself stopped me in my tracks, waist deep in the lake. I stood still, silent, not breathing, watching my stick slither away through the water. _Snake_, my brain supplied without prompting, but my mind had focused elsewhere by then.

Love.

I knew that word, I'd said that word, though I couldn't imagine when, or where, or what reason I would have had to utter it.

"Love." I said it aloud then, quietly to myself, trying it, tasting it. It felt familiar, right, like it'd said it a million times before, though I couldn't begin to fathom in what reality that would have been. All I remembered was the fire, and then the clearing, and I certainly hadn't loved in either of those places. Though I supposed the feeling of the blood smothering the fire that seared my throat came pretty damn close to love.

My lips twitched into a smile at that thought.

The feelings I'd had were right; once I had the word I knew it to my core. Everything from elation to devotion to desire to pain, they were all there, all a part of this love. It should have been wrong, discordant, those things shouldn't mesh, let alone well. But under the umbrella, under love, they did. Somehow, impossibly, they were one in the same. And I'd experienced it . . . maybe? Sometime . . . .

Frustration rushed through me quickly, followed instantly by fury, and I screamed -a horrifying shriek that was harsh and painful in the silence of the forest.

Why, why, _why _did this elude me? Why, why, _why_ could I not remember who I'd loved, when I'd loved, and why it felt _right _for the word to pass my lips?

I knew so much without even considering it. I knew snake, bear, blood, wife. I knew how to make the fire starter spew fire, how to cure the burning in my throat, and how to take down a man twice my size. I knew which way it was to river one, how long it would take to get there at a run, and how far north I'd have to go to hit the tent where the couple were laying together dead. I knew these things, my brain retained and supplied all of these effortlessly, filling in the blanks even when I hadn't realized I'd known the answer to the question. So why couldn't I remember the one thing I felt nearly desperate to know?

I'd know love before, I was sure of it. Whether it was in dreams I'd had while I'd writhed in hell or in a life I'd lived before I'd burned I didn't know, but there must've been something before. There was no way love, deep, desperate love, could have existed in the fire, and there was no way I could know it, be able to feel it if hadn't lived it.

There was something before the fire, there simply had to be. Something that involved love and pain and grief and joy. It was something that was just out of reach, something I couldn't quite grasp. But I was determined to regain the memories, the dreams - one way or another.

Suddenly, unbidden, another memory burst forth and I knew what I was meant to do with the couple I'd left in the clearing. I pushed the anger, the hurt, the injustice to the back of my mind and was out of the water in a second, running through the woods so quickly I was dry after the first mile. It was close to dawn when I reached their campsite.

I buried them on top of each other in the same grave just after sunrise.


	4. Chapter 4

It was eighteen days later that I came upon the road. It was a small road, a little wisp of a thing twisting and turning through the stands of trees, running right through the heart of the forest. When I'd first come upon it, I'd been confused. It wasn't natural. The smell of it, the feel of it, didn't blend seamlessly in with the forest. I didn't know where it came from, what it was doing, or why it was there. So I stood back and watched. I stayed well out of sight, behind the trees, deep within the shadows of the forest. I never thought it would attack, it was obviously part of the landscape, but I knew it was different from the rivers, rocks, and trees I'd encountered roaming the woods.

It wasn't fifteen minutes later that I found out how different it was.

I smelled it, heard it, long before I saw it. The sound was familiar, something from my life before, but I wasn't able to place it at first. It was plugging along, slowly but surely, and I thought about it, pondered, for a good four minutes before it made its appearance. But once I saw it, once it came around the bend, I felt stupid for not realizing sooner. Automobile, vehicle, car. I should have remembered.

I'd been doing a lot of that over the past couple of weeks – chiding myself for not remembering. When my mind would stumble over a memory, over a feeling, I felt stupid, inept, and oh so frustrated. I tried to keep my cool when that happened, I really did, but more often than not I would lose my temper in the worst way. The first few times were harmless enough. I would scream, shriek, cry out at the top of my lungs. That seemed to get rid of much of the tension even it if did silence the forest. Gradually though, as the days went by and more and more questions arose that had no answers, I found that screaming was no longer enough.

The first time I'd truly lost control was the worst. I'd found a man, a camper, alone in the woods, whose smell set my throat on fire. I'd watched him a while before I invaded his campsite, doing my best to resist the urge to charge in and attack, and saw him doing something interesting. He had a battery pack hooked up to something that glowed, illuminating his face in the twilight, while he alternated between tapping away on it and consulting a nearby sheet of paper. I'd struggled then, my normally helpful mind not doing a thing to help me place the object or it's purpose, and after a while the frustration and the burning overtook me. I charged the campsite with a roar that shook the earth, drained the blood from the man tout de suite, tore him limb from limb in my rage, and destroyed the entire campsite and a good amount of forest. I'd had to gather the pieces over a mile wide radius to dispose of him and clear out of the campsite before the blood on the ground made the fire reignite.

I'd realized hours later that it was a computer.

While I was hesitant to expose myself to new things, confusing things, I realized that if I were determined to discover what came before the fire, I wouldn't have much choice. After those first days, those confusing and disorienting days spent wandering aimlessly and cataloging the forest, I'd been working very hard on controlling my emotions, controlling the frustration, controlling my reaction to the fire. I was getting better very slowly and had managed not to tear a camper completely apart in a week. Of course, I had barely met a camper in a week which only served to further my interest in this little road.

A road with cars meant people, of that much I was sure, and people in cars meant blood. Blood I desperately needed to squelch the fire.

It seemed like the fire was never quite gone. It was better when it was doused in blood and felt almost manageable for a while right after. But always, always it burned on, this part of me that had never managed to escape the fire. And there were never enough campers to soothe the burn.

So when I found the road, this little artery through the heart of my forest, I came up with a plan. Surely it wouldn't be hard to get someone to stop for me. And once they'd stopped, I'd eat them. Easy. Or rather, it seemed easy when my throat was on fire and I was desperate for blood. I wasn't so sure when it actually came down to it it'd be easy at all.

It was twenty days from the day I emerged from the fire that I decided to put my plan into motion. I hid high in a tree, lurking, waiting, until the telltale rumbling of an engine met my ears. I sat crouched, listening, watching, until I saw the front of the car round the bend near my vantage point. Then I leaped gracefully from the tree in which I'd perched to the middle of the road and waited to see what happened.

I expected the driver to see me, to slow down, to stop to see why I was there. I expected the driver to see me, to speed up, to drive by without another thought. I never expected the driver to turn the wheel without slowing down and careen through the trees and into the forest.

I stared at the car dumbly as it bounced over logs and cut a path through the underbrush, glancing off trees, until it finally hit a trunk dead on and came to a loud, thudding stop. I stood in the road and stared at the wreckage stunned for three full seconds before the smell hit me and my throat went up in flames. Blood.

I was at the driver's side door in a second, wrenching it off its hinges and pulling the driver from the wreckage. It was a young woman, blonde hair stained with her blood, and I barely spared her a glance before plunging my teeth into her neck and drinking deeply. I was interrupted by a shrill chirping coming from her pocket.

I drank until she was empty and then went for her pocket, using a finger in the opening to pull it clear off her pants. Out tumbled some change, a circle in a foil wrapper, and something I recognized, knew intimately, it seemed – a phone. I tucked the young woman back into the car, doing my best to jam the door back on so she wouldn't fall out, and turned my attention to the little phone.

It was tiny, black, and very delicate.

I discovered weeks ago when rifling through a camper's gear that I didn't know my strength. Things that seemed easy enough to touch, to pick up, crumbled under my grasp. I'd gotten the hang of grabbing and gripping eventually, but I had to be careful. Any more pressure than the tiniest amount would destroy anything and everything I laid a finger on.

With that in mind, I plucked the phone off the ground with little more pressure than a butterfly's wing.

I turned the phone over in my hand, running my finger gently over the front, the back, the number keys. This was something I remembered clearly from my previous life, the life before the fire, and to see it here in middle of the woods with me was almost eerie.

The memories had started coming a week after I'd escaped the fire. The first was a face, just a flash, that came to me one night when I was running in the woods. A man with a mustache and kind, guarded eyes. The image shocked me so much I'd skidded to a stop right then and there.

There had been a dozen or so memories since the first, all coming randomly, all just fragments. I'd gotten in the habit of thinking of the things from that life as a dream. Be it a face, a word, an action - these people, these things were fantasy, a fable, always existing somewhere, sometime, but never in my reality.

However, it was hard to argue fantasy when I had the object from my dreams solidly in my hand. But fantasy or not, I knew just what to do with it.

I turned the phone over again - once, twice - then ghosted my fingers over the keys, pressing in an order that was so familiar yet felt so strange. I didn't know where the number came from, but it was a number I knew, apparently by heart.

The phone range once, twice, three times, then four, and then someone picked up.

"Hello?" The voice that came through the line was deep, male and startled me so much I almost crushed the fragile case to dust in my hand. But I acted quickly, forcing my fingers to relax, and dropped the phone to the ground instead. I crouched down next to it, peering at the little screen. The number I'd dialed was still displayed prominently.

The voice came again, a little louder this time. "Hello? Are you there? Who is this?" He sounded angry, urgent, upset, and I cocked my head, thinking. The voice was familiar, but I couldn't even begin to place it. "Hey! Who the hell is –"

"Who are you?" I asked, without lowering my face to the phone. "I know you."

"Bella?" came the strangled reply. I cocked my head again and thought for a moment. It didn't sound right for him, it didn't sound familiar.

"No?" It was more of a question than anything. I could swear that I knew him. I knew his number, at least. I wondered if he was the mustached man.

He breathed out in a great big whoosh. "Bella, tell me where you are. I'll come and get you, everything will be fine. I promise."

"I'm . . ." I glanced around, as if I didn't already know the answer, "in the woods."

"Okay. Okay, we can work with that. Do you know what woods you're in? How did you get the phone? Are you hurt?" His questions came fast one after another, and while my mind could keep up with them, I felt overwhelmed. His voice brought forth almost memories, half memories, echoes that my mind couldn't seem to chase down. I felt torn, scattered, conflicted.

I gathered my thoughts, focused up, and answered his closest question truthfully. "It only hurts when it burns." The silence that stretched out after that was deafening.

The sound of an engine tore my attention from the phone and had my head perking up and turning toward the road. A car pulled to the side, no doubt investigating the signs of an accident, and I was torn. Half of me wanted to charge the road and attack whoever stopped; the other half wanted to hide my kill and hope I wasn't discovered. I thought for a second, vacillating between the two, before pulling the driver's side door from the wreckage for a second time, grabbing the girl, and charging off into the woods.

As I melted into the shadows, nothing more than a shadow myself, I looked back toward the place I'd dropped the phone only to find it crushed to smithereens under the mangled car door, plastic bits scattered around the wreckage.


	5. Chapter 5

The grass in the meadow at the edge of the woods was tall, untended, and swayed gently in the afternoon breeze. I lay in the field amongst the dancing blades naked, supine, relishing in the feeling of the sun heating my skin.

The sun in the meadow was unlike any sunlight I'd known since escaping the fire. The sunlight I'd met in the woods, on the road, was weak and tepid, watery, even when it shone down through the leaves of the trees between rain showers. The sun of the forest never warmed my skin, but often made it tickle and itch with the promise of, the desire for, something more.

When I'd wandered into the meadow, I'd found my more.

The sun in the meadow was fierce; hot and strong like a passionate warrior, battling through the clouds, through the rain, through the darkness to reach his lover, the meadow. And when he found her, when the war separating them was won, he conquered her, loved her – he kiss her with heat, caressed her with his rays, watched her come alive under his influence. I couldn't blame the meadow for her surrender – I was half in love with this warrior sun myself. His heat stirred me, brought forth images of vast, empty spaces, dry, brown mountains, hot and cold valleys. Sparkling in the rays of sunlight, my body warm, my eyes closed, I didn't know and didn't care whether these images were fantasy or reality. I didn't give a damn whether they were memories, dreams, or something imagined. All I knew in that moment was satisfaction. Everything else I would think about later.

I stretched languidly, like a cat in the sun, and relaxed into the ground. I breathed deeply, nearly purring out my pleasure, and let the smells of the meadow wash over me. The breeze rustling the grasses carried scents and forfeited the secrets of objects, creatures, hidden beneath the flora and verdure. I could smell the nest of rabbits twenty yards to my right, huddled silently in their hole, sleeping. I could smell the field mice, running noisily, playing field mice games near the fallen log that had escaped the forest. I could smell the snake slithering just an arm's length from my feet, moving quietly, stealthily, no doubt on his way to make the field mice his dinner. In the meadow, I was in heaven - warm and content, happy.

I low rumble met my ears a while later and I let my head loll to the side, my ear to the sky, listening. After a long moment of torn focus, I recognized the sound - an engine, getting closer by the second.

I frowned toward the sun, eyes closed against the brightness.

There wasn't a road near the meadow, of that I was sure. Since there wasn't a road, I couldn't predict where the vehicle was coming from or where it might be going. Unwilling to leave behind the meadow, the sunlight, my contentment, I lay still. Until I heard the engine cut off and a door slam shut. The smell of blood set my throat aflame.

"Really, Josh? This is where you bring me?" I was on my feet and into the cool shadows of the tree line in a second.

"What?" said a male voice on a laugh, "This isn't private enough for you?"

The girl huffed. "Yeah, it's private enough. But there are probably snakes and things." My eyes flickered to the big log where the snake had just downed its second mouse. The others had scattered. My eyes flicked back toward the voices just as the couple came into my line of sight.

The girl was a young, a dirty blonde, with round hips and small breasts. The boy, Josh, was a little older, maybe a year or two, with a fleshy stomach, dark hair and glasses. They tromped through the meadow holding hands.

"Snakes and things," Josh scoffed, using the girl's arm and momentum to turn her so she was standing in front of him. He circled her waist with this arms and lowered his mouth to hers, barely brushing their lips together. "I'm sure I can protect you from snakes and things." His lips met hers again, the contact longer and more fevered than the last, and I cocked my head at them from the tree line. The passion, the heat behind that simple touch . . . was familiar. I'd had that.

I scraped my nails over the ache in my chest, my bare skin still warm from the sun, eyes trained on the couple. My mind scrambled to fill in the blanks, to supply the memory that came with the action, but I came up empty. I scowled at them from the forest.

The girl hummed her assent, her pleasure, breaking the kiss just long enough to pull her shirt over her head. Josh's thick fingers set to work the second her lips were pressed back to his and he dropped her bra into the high grass a moment later. His lips were on her breast in a flash. The girl threw her head back, arching into his mouth, long hair streaming behind her as she moaned skyward.

The aching in my chest lessened when their lips weren't touching and I found my fingertips ghosting over my own bare nipple, trying to stir something familiar. My fingers brought forth nothing – no feelings, no memories, no sense of déjà vu – and I dropped my hand, angry, frustrated. The fire in my throat pulsed, burned hotter.

In the sixty-four days since I'd escaped the fire, I'd learned, remembered, a lot of things. Most of the things, such as how long to microwave popcorn, were total nonsense and completely useless to me. Where the hell did I find a microwave and why would I make popcorn? But the things I wanted to remember, the things that kept me searching, thinking, straining to recall day after day, were obscured by a fog, locked and hidden away from my conscious mind. It was on the rare occasion when my mind strayed, when I stopped examining the few remnants of memories that I'd managed to snag, that something new, something that had been locked away, would break free.

Unfortunately, dragging my mind away from thoughts that consumed was more than a little difficult.

Josh redirected his attention suddenly, moving from pressing his lips against the girl's chest to her mouth. The ache in my chest flared again when their lips met and I dug my nails into the skin over the pain. I growled when I felt my skin break under my nails but didn't reduce the pressure.

"Unzip your pants, baby," Josh breathed, breaking their kiss to pull his shirt over his head. His torso was much paler than his arms and face, his skin under his shirt only a few shades darker than my own.

"Not until you say it," his girlfriend whispered back, flicking open the button on her jeans and waiting, her bare chest just inches from his. He pulled her flush against him and leaned in for another kiss, this one soft, longing, loving.

The ache in my chest turned to pain, flaring white-hot, forcing out the air from my lungs. Rage erupted and spread, burning its way through me, intensifying the fire in my throat and making my fingers tingle. I stared at the joined couple with such intensity I was surprised I didn't set them aflame with my gaze alone.

I would take him first, I decided. He brought them here, causing this pain, ruining my afternoon. It was him who drove off the road, started the kissing, wanted to be naked. It was him I would drink first. Then I would have her.

He broke the kiss and looked down at the girl with an expression I couldn't place. His words were so soft, so tender, I almost didn't hear them over my own thoughts. "I love you, Charlie," he whispered passionately, reverently. I stopped short, crouched within the tree line, just a second from tearing into them both.

Abruptly, from nowhere, memories broke loose.

A dark headed man in a living room, feet kicked up, sports game on TV, pictures of a brunette girl smiling at him from the mantle.

A tidy kitchen with bright yellow cabinets and a mismatched dining set.

The smell of sweat and fear in the darkness. An embrace, the smell of aftershave. Love, comfort, and safety all back-lit by a light just outside the door.

Kind eyes, caring eyes, a deep brown, both worried and crinkling around the corners in pleasure.

Fish . . . everywhere fish, toted into the kitchen by the cooler full by a man with a shoulder holster and a mustache.

I gasped, replacing the air sucked out of me with rage, bringing my free hand to cover the one already digging into the skin at my chest.

I knew that man, that place.

The couple in the meadow forgotten, I turned and darted into the forest.


End file.
